In the course of completing an oil and/or gas well, it is common practice to run a string of casing into the well bore and then to run the production tubing inside the casing. At the well site, the casing is perforated across one or more production zones to allow production fluids to enter the casing bore. During production of the formation fluid, formation sand is also swept into the flow path, and erodes production components.
In some completions, the well bore is uncased, and an open face is established across the oil or gas bearing zone. Such open bore (uncased) arrangements are utilized, for example, in water wells, test wells and horizontal well completions. One or more sand screens are installed in the flow path between the production tubing and the perforated casing (cased) or the open well bore face (uncased). A packer is customarily set above the sand screen to seal off the annulus in the zone where production fluids flow into the production tubing. The annulus around the screen may be packed with a relatively coarse sand or gravel which acts as a filter to reduce the amount of fine formation sand reaching the screen.